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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Evangelion 3: The Search For Love

Despite the fact that she calls him an “arrogant bastard”
who expects her to “come when he calls” she still obeys him, though not
completely. She slips in a self-destruction program but it is ultimately
defeated by her mother’s mistakes, a common theme throughout the series as her
mother chooses her lover over her daughter, choosing Gendo over everything
else. Despite Ritsuko’s repeated statements that she doesn’t want to be her
mother in the end she is led to her downfall by both of their mistakes, and ends up dead for it, just like her mother.

Misato
arrives at the command deck and takes control, very decisive even with
everything that has been going on in her personal life she is still cool and
collected in a time of high stress. She forgets about everything else when the
time comes that she needs to be a leader effectively ignoring everything else,
pushing it to the back of her mind and bottling it up until the current
conflict is done, resulting in her crashing in her personal life and her
relationships destroyed because she doesn’t really understand her emotions
outside of combat.

The sole
computer that remains is Casper,
the personification of the lover, as opposed by the mother and scientist. The
others are also named for one of the three original wisemen, Balthasar and
Melchior. The computers stand as the voice of reason more than any human being,
and their destruction or take over is treated as one of the worst possible
things, worse than losing any single person. For Ritsuko however it is much
worse, it is losing the last thing her mother left to her, and in fact
essentially losing her mother again, which is why she is so adamant in
defending it even though it means working for someone she hates. As she leaves
the bowels of the machine she comments how she will see her mother again,
knowing her death is soon at hand.

Soon after
there are some beautiful images of the greenery outside of Tokyo,
but it is disturbed by armed forces rushing in and destroying near
everything, indicating that the end has begun for NERV, and at the hands of
humans not the eldritch abominations they were fighting. It is ironic that the
last Angel, Kaworu is arguably more human than these military soldiers who are
nameless and wear identical uniforms. Kozo comments that their “final enemy is
man” as opposed to the spectral incredibly deadly angels, and that is actually
who they lose to, fellow humans.

Makato when
confronted by the fact that the human soldiers will soon be assaulting them
says he wishes that they would acknowledge that they are all humans, and should
not be fighting amongst one another. Despite this he is still willing to fight
and kill when it comes down to his life or others. The soldiers are then shown
mercilessly slaughtering members of the NERV defense force who are almost
unaware of what’s happening, and definitely not prepared for any of this kind of
violence. This is shown clearly as guards are assassinated or mercilessly
destroyed before they have a chance to retaliate.

The control
station descends into chaos as the enemy forces begin to invade. Misato shouts
orders and is in her element, collected even with all the madness that is going
on around. This is the only place she actually feels right, and may actually
be enjoying it as her last hurrah, since NERV is soon to be disbanded. She
attempts to secure the pilots safety above all else, as the children are the
only people capable of operating the Evas, the ultimate weapons. However Rei is
missing, Asuka is comatose, and Shinji has lost all hope.

Rei is
bathing in LCL, the lifeblood of Lilith. She is naked, but at peace, completely
unaware of what is going on around, all the violence and death, merely content
with her life. Rei may be some incarnation of Lilith, cloned from part of Yui’s
body and created for Gendo’s needs, both sexual and emotional. She was
essentially a puppet for him, and created to help him meet with his one true
love, Yui. Unfortunately through Shinji’s affections and Asuka’s fiery
personality she created a personality of her own, far from Gendo’s original
plan, which leads to the Third Impact occurring quite differently from his
vision, flawed as it was.

In the next scene Shinji is shown in an extremely vulnerable position, unable to move or do anything
due to everything piling up and pushing him past the breaking point, almost for
good. The shot of him is followed by every barrier in the headquarters closing
representing how Shinji has closed himself off completely from everyone, as his
descent into total depression is complete and he believes no one can save him,
or help him. Now some of the walls are being destroyed, but not in a productive
way, but by extreme violence, as his walls are broken down only through the
explosive situation he is in, and even then only partially and in no way permanently.

Gendo has
realized that any defence they have is pointless, and that their defeat is
“inevitable”. With this he decides that the only solution is the final
solution, to use the ultimate weapon to create a new world. As he leaves Kozo
says to give his “regards to Yui” as he knows what Gendo intends to do, and
agrees with it. He loved Yui but could never show it as she did not return the
feeling, and he was her teacher and mentor meaning any relationship would be
deeply flawed, not that that stops many relationships in the series, but in
this case Kozo knew that nothing good could come of it, though perhaps in his
last moments he could allow Gendo and Yui some happiness.

The
soldiers are shown to be incredibly efficient as the world burns around them,
and they slaughter any and everyone, killing some soldiers who were hiding with
no mercy or empathy. To the audience they are dehumanized not only by their
actions, but also by their masks covering much of their upper faces, making
them essentially mindless drones to the audience, impossible to empathize with
even if they were trying to stop the end of the world, though it’s unclear who
are the good and the bad guys here, or if there really are either. At this
point there are simply the characters that the audience empathizes with, and
those that they don’t.